Chapter III: Hunters
Private First Class Kevin Winters
9th Ranger Battalion, UNSC
Beras III, Beras system
August 20th, 2534 UNSC Calendar
A day of rest was exactly what we needed, the battle for Beras mostly ended last night when the enemy fleet abandoned their army on the surface of the planet. We basically just sit around on guard duty, sometimes the Marines will get picked up in Falcons to go on sky patrols but it doesn't happen very often.
I lean against the window of the guard tower I've been standing in since 0500, sleep still lines my eyes from the peaceful dream I'd been having. Of course today Reyes decided to make my life a living hell. I'm pretty much assigned to this position through breakfast, meaning I have to eat some shitty protein bars or starve, and then for lunch I got to dig latrines. Great.
My eyes flick around at the buildings around us, after the Covenant left the city, command thought it'd be a swell idea for us to turn their FOB into our FOB, reminding me of the missed shot that would've made me a legend among the Rangers, I mean, anybody can take down a General, but kill reports of a Prophet have never been public if they've happened, I wanted to be the face that killed the son of a bitch. And word is from the Navy he got away.
Hours pass and I am tapped on the shoulder, a Marine sniper taking my place as I walk down and grab a good old fashioned E-Tool from the armory, getting to work as I start digging. According to command the water pipes in the city have pretty much blown up, causing flooding within the homes of citizens. How did it happen? No clue, I just decide to keep my mouth shut for once and dig the stupid latrine.
When I finish I put the E-Tool back in the armory, where I'm greeted by Reyes. "Learnt your lesson yet?" She asks me with the raise of her eyebrows. She looks a lot better than she had yesterday, the UNSC medics really work wonders.
"Yes ma'am." I say to her, forming up an attention stance as she greets me.
"So I'm assuming it won't happen again." She says.
"It won't happen again."
"Good. Dismissed."
I turn on my heel and walk away, my SRS still on my shoulder. I hear my helmet's PDA system go off, a small message waiting for me.
'We got picked for an assignment -Holzhy'
I let out a sigh of relief, it's about time we got picked to do anything.
I check my armor webbing for ammunition, finding plenty as I walk over to the staging area, several Falcon's already ready. I jog up to the closest VTOL, jumping on to the side rail and buckling myself in, testing my field of view with my rifle's scope, just to make sure I can shoot any bastard I see.
A bunch of other Rangers seat themselves on to the skids before the Falcon lifts off, speeding out of the city. We fly over the CCS Battlecruiser wreckage, UNSC manned excavators surround it, stripping it clean of any technology ONI could possibly use for the war effort.
Trees pass under us, smoking remains of tanks and fallen aircraft leaving scars through the lush forest. It's a strange thing to be able to look down and see the remains of a battle with no bodies.
A voice in the back of my head reminds me that until our fleet had arrived we were getting our asses handed to us, and now we are the hunters.
As we approach our target area ( according to our pilot ), a man begins to talk on the radio. "We've had some odd signals in this area, confirmation of plasma detonations all through last night along with confirmed sightings of Grunt patrols, we need ya'll to go in there and kill all of them." The voice says before simply stopping, he had already given us all we needed.
Our Falcon lowers itself to the ground after slowing down, the skids touching the ground before we're off, jogging into the treelike towards our objective marker. I turn the heat scope for my SRS to on, looking through it to make sure we aren't going to have any surprises for at least now.
Ahead of us is nothing as we continue our trek through the woods. We arrive at the objective and begin to look around, it takes about fifteen minutes for the Rangers to find something. We all stack up on the outside of an old titanium mine, a trail of blue blood indicating that Grunts had been here, wounded or dead.
We move into the cave, staying along the wall with our weapons raised as we walk inside to find a gruesome sight.
Bodies lay all around, every alien imaginable except for Elites and of course Brutes since the apes were never here in the first place. Each alien body upon further inspection had holes torn into their bodies, their insides being removed from them.
"Oh shit." Holzhy says.
"What's up?" I ask him.
"I think the Elites ate these guys, to survive." He explains as we walk further into the mine, expecting to find the Elites at any moment. I pull up a map of the mine of the top left corner of my HUD, the last open area of the mine approaching fast.
We spread out into the area only to find what must be a refugee camp of Elites. They all look malnourished and tired, but we wipe that off of them by filling their bodies with lead.
I watch as their bodies crumple to the ground, we do another sweep of the cave before heading back out, getting on to the Falcons again and heading back to base.
It only takes a week for the planet to be declared clear of Covenant forces, meaning a UNSC victory. Luckily our ship the UNSC Heretic survived the battle above, it had been the ship to cover the civilian refugees in their journey off planet, it seems like we exhausted a lot if not all of our ammunition. We board the ship and report to our rooms for some well needed rest, when I get to my quarters a folder is sitting on my bed.
I lean down and pick it up slowly, opening it before reading the message inside.
'Private First Class Kevin Winters, you are receiving a promotion to Specialist and a pass into the Ranger Sniper School because of your actions on Beras, you and your spotter will learn the ways of the UNSC Sniper before returning to active duty. Report to Fort Alexandria on Reach for your training.'
I place the folder on Holzhy's bed before walking to the armory to return my weapons. I then walk back to my room and I change out of my armor, placing the pieces in a box under my bed. I chat with Holzhy about the sniper school before walking up to the cryo tubes where we are frozen for our journey to Reach.
When we are unfrozen we get dressed into our casuals and catch the first Airbus to the surface, the bus takes us by the space port where we grab a cab and drove to the camp we were designated to go to.
We get processed fairly easily, the sniper school itself consists of a Virtual Environment room for moving targets and the likes, a shooting range, a small marsh and forest, plus the main building where the recruits and instructors stay.
Our first order of the day is learning about fire control and picking targets, then the lessons moved to knowing our weapon to wind and distance, making sure that we understand how a rifle works.
My eyes flick around at the recruits around me, some looked as if they hadn't even seen combat, the UNSC had already put out a giant propaganda program for all able men and women to join up, but it didn't seem to be very effective as you still see a lot of able bodied men and women roaming the streets.
We move to the shooting range, firing at targets for the rest of the day and going back to the barracks for the night, we would only have two more days of training. Traditional sniper school would last a lot longer, but the UNSC needed soldiers out of training as quickly as possible to support the war effort, after all, recruits are nothing compared to trained snipers.
The instructors explain that a lot of our training will come from being on the battlefield, which is about as reassuring as it sounds.
The next morning we work on ghillie suits, specifically ones that would fit over our armor, anything from marking our armor with dirt to covering ourselves with foliage. We test these suits by staying perfectly still in the ground and trying to get from one point to another through the forest and the marsh while the instructors look for us, if they find us you have to try again.
I passed this test on my third try, finally discovering that hiding in tall grass was not exactly your best bet. We go down to the range again and start shooting, our aim has significantly improved and our spotters read off the wind and distance like its their job.. Which it is.
Our final day on camp we did our tests, all of us except for two Green Rangers pass easily and are given our orders, which is pretty much to go back to the same ship, so for Holzhy and I we got to enjoy ourselves on Reach for the rest of the week, so about four days.
The UNSC pays for a hotel room, Holzhy sleeps in a different room while I crash in the main room, the hotel beds nice and fluffy compared to the UNSC standard shitty cot we had been sleeping on in Beras.
I wake up in the morning and I decide to take a walk, trying to see what New Alexandria had to offer, other than the notorious Red District, which contains the largest strip clubs and whorehouses on Reach.
I find a nice little restaurant to eat lunch in, after all, what else is there to do on a planet with the largest amount of military personnel, strip clubs and bars on this side of the Galaxy? Honestly at this point I'm just counting the days until my next deployment. I flash my dog tags to the guy at the door and he finds me a seat, a pretty waitress comes by but at this point I could give less of a shit about what she looked like considering she'd be handling my food.
It only takes about ten minutes for me to finish and pay, and then I'm out with my hands in my pockets, walking up the road to the hotel I was assigned, the only productive thing I can see myself doing is sleeping so I do just that.
Of course, sleeping can only last you so long.
Authors note
I know what you're going to say, but let me explain. So things have been fairly crazy, I had a death in the family ( don't feel sorry it was weeks ago ) and we've had such a crazy amount of snow that I haven't found time for writing and when I was writing I was wishing I could just stop, which is not really an attitude I like to write with.
But I'll try to be back now, this is a short chapter but it wraps up the Beras campaign and actually transitioned into sniper school. I know how long actual sniper school lasts but I'm using the excuse that they need these guys in the field now, so Winters is officially a sniper now and he won't be as reckless and stupid as he was in the last two chapters. You're welcome.
Anyway that's gonna wrap this one up, I hope to see you guys in the reviews section as reviewing helps my story improve.
Read on
-Rsk